Antimicrobial creams are known to promote skin and soft tissue wound healing via topical administration. Such antimicrobial creams typically demonstrate improvement in wound healing as well as more rapid closure of wounds. In this way, such topical antimicrobial creams decrease infection and inflammation commonly associated with wounds, scars, and burns. More specifically, topical antimicrobial creams will generally relieve redness and inflammation, and will increase the speed and quality of wound healing. There is a correlation between the therapeutic effects of these creams and their healing potentials.
Topical antimicrobial products are commercially available in various media, such as lotions, creams, ointments, and gels. A key active ingredient in one class of commercially-available antimicrobial creams is silver sulfadiazine. Hebermin and Silvadene® are brand names for known topical antimicrobial creams containing silver sulfadiazine. Each demonstrate serviceable healing performance in the treatment of skin wounds.
Hebermin is stated as having the following ingredients: Silver sulfadiazine 1%, urogastrone 0.001%, stearyl alcohol, petrolatum, polyoxyl 40 stearate, propylene glycol, isopropyl myristate, and sorbitan monooleate with methylparaben 0.3%.
Silvadene® is stated as having similar ingredients to Hebermin without the urogastrone.
It is always advantageous to reduce the healing time for skin wounds. The quicker a wound heals, the less downtime the patient sustains with limited mobility and discomfort. Quicker healing also reduces the risk of infection. It would therefore be highly advantageous if the healing performance of existing silver sulfadiazine-based topical creams such as Hebermin and Silvadene® could be accelerated to provide even better healing performance in a shorter period of time.